Mike is a retired stock broker, and now published author of Gold Rush!. In addition, he is a freelance writer specializing in real estate, personal finance and home decor now writing from San Miguel, Mexico.

Might be a good idea to get to the bottom of this before the nomination:

Sunday an expert in electronic document forensics released a detailed report on the purported birth certificate — actually a “Certification of Live Birth” or COLB — claimed as genuine by his campaign. The expert concludes with 100% certainty that it is a crudely forged fake: “a horribly forgery,” according to the analysis published on the popular right-wing Atlas Shrugs blog.

Writing about words, I was reminded of a post I wrote recently, in which I wanted to use a word for complacent and “sanguine” popped into my head. I wrote it down and then I questioned myself, “Is that the proper word?” So I Googled “define sanguine”. What I found had to do with

# confidently optimistic and cheerful
# a blood-red color

That was not what I intended. Carol Burnside had the same problem with the word. She wrote, “In my head, it sounds like a good word to describe a lazy river or a couch potato. Not so.

In my head sanguine seemed to be a good word for complacent. The word Sanguine really means:

First I read in Dr. Jack Wheeler’s To The Point that on Obama’s visit to Afghanistan, according to US Marine Battle Captain Jeffrey S. Porter, the troops were ready to meet and shake Obama’s hand and Obama stiffed them.

As the Soldiers were lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn’t say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball.

Then in Germany,

Sen. Barack Obama scrapped plans to visit wounded members of the armed forces in Germany as part of his overseas trip, a decision his spokesman said was made because the Democratic presidential candidate thought it would be inappropriate on a campaign-funded journey.

Shades of Hillary Clinton.

Sen. McCain rightly says it is never inappropriate to visit the wounded. Indeed!

All bloggers who write for the Forbes Business and Finance Blog Network and have ads sold by Adify have been asked to verify in writing that we comply with the British IASH standards of conduct:

Adify-powered networks, such as Forbes Business and Finance Blog Network, along with all other ad networks selling site inventory that is accessed by UK audiences, must comply with periodic audits by the Internet Advertising Sales Houses (IASH) Council (http://www.iash.org), the governing organization for online advertising in the UK, in order to accept UK originated media campaigns. These audits verify that the inventory being sold meets certain criteria for quality, appropriateness, and legal compliance, collectively referred to as the Site Accreditation Requirements (Schedule A of The IASH Code of Conduct, whose language can be found at the bottom of this email).

FAILURE TO DO SO WILL MEAN THAT YOUR SITE IS NOT IASH-COMPLIANT, AND YOUR SITE WILL BE EXLUDED FROM PORTIONS OF MEDIA BUYS TARGETING THE UK.

In order to be compliant, the blog must not “contain barred content.” There are several definitions of barred content like Hate Content, Obscenity and Indecency, offering bombs and gun information, spyware and invalid clicks generated by prohibited methods. Under Hate Content are these words:

I immediately thought of the Danish cartoons of Muhammed that newspapers wouldn’t print, but the world’s bloggers did. I printed those cartoons in my blog. I regularly take to task, our government on the illegal immigration issue. I regularly take liberals and McCain to task and government as a whole. Oh, don’t forget the global warming “religious” hoaxers that I challenge on their “facts”, BUT I am not inciting hatred of “any race, religion, creed, class or ethnic group”, so I signed.

If that kicks me out of the UK club, it’s a pity. Then, it’s not a club I would voluntarily join.

How many times have I heard liberals say, “I want a president, who when he speaks, doesn’t sound like an idiot. Someone that sounds intelligent.”

What they really want is someone who sounds like Sen. Barack H. Obama. Here are his words in rocket-shelled Israeli town of Sderot:

Answering an Israeli reporter’s question in Sderot, he was confused about which Senate committee he served on. “Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committeeâ€”which is my committeeâ€”a bill to call for divestment from Iran as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon,” he said. Just one problem: he actually sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Here are two diametrically opposed points of view:
This first chart credits Bloomberg LP for the data and differs from everything that I’ve read and charts I’ve seen. It’s from an NewsMax that says we are on the brink of a major oil bust. They say

We’re not alone in our thinking. According to the consensus forecast tracked by Thomson Reuters, oil prices are expected to end this year around $91 a barrel, falling to $90 by the end of next year and $82 by the end of 2010

The chart that reflects the general view of oil that I subscribe to is this one:
Newsmax’s chart only covers out to May, 2008 and does not reflect reality and I think highly misleading. It feeds into all those who say that oil companies have a lot of their oil shut in; that OPEC and the Saudis have plenty of supply; that the oil companies and the car companies are sitting on technology that would solve the energy crisis. Why do we have to wait until the lights go out to do something?